Day 2,791

It hadn't grown so much as it has sprouted overnight, limbs of bark and bones perfectly enmeshed within the concrete wall as the foundations below hummed to its erratic pulse. Management closed down the basement after the rest of the apartment tower nagged them enough but that was all they did.

We were left to live with walls that whispered and the same twisted face in our dreams. A few residents called in a pest control team who took one look and ran out screaming. Several pest control companies later, it seemed that us residents weren't seeing what everyone else was.

They'd stagger up the basement stairs, sobbing and begging for all the eyes to disappear but what we were seeing didn't even have a head. It was just a torso, handless arms and footless legs in an almost peaceful repose within the concrete. No masses of eyes, no million voices calling our names - absolutely nothing like the non-residents were describing.

I don't quite know when we started to think of it as a friend, to think of ourselves as Residents with a capital "R" and everyone else as a Non-Resident, people who couldn't see what was really there and recognise it as a friend like we did.

Slowly but surely we've all begun to turn our lives inwards, to disown the Non-Residents and focus on our friend. After a while, our phones will turn silent and the banging on the doors will cease and it'll just be us and our friend, happy to sit and listen to nothing but soothing whispers as the walls cover our skin.